Pros:

Cons:

You wake up in a high security hospital room, heavily bandaged, unsure who you are, how you got there, or why you're there. As far as story introductions go, it's a well-worn cliché. But UK developers Free Radicals managed to breathe new life into the idea in its third-person action title, Second Sight, which debuted on the major consoles last fall and has now made the jump from console to PC. It's a surprisingly enjoyable story-driven game only held back by a few slight design issues.

Before you can discover the mysteries surrounding your imprisonment, you're going to have to escape your room. It's here that you uncover the first mystery: you can move things with your mind. Second Sight does a good job of telling you how to use your new psychic abilities, and in the gives you the opportunity to practice until you get the hang of it, but I found the controls to be extremely cumbersome at first and died more than a few times just trying to use my newfound telekinesis.

After the opening stages, the game flashes back in time, and it's here that Second Sight really starts to shine. Rather than mere cutscenes (which are also present), the flashbacks are as much a part of the game as the current time period. As it switches between modern-day events and the past, you start to piece together bits of the missing part of your life. The story is (by far) the best part of Second Sight and should keep you going no matter how frustrating things get.

Working well with the story is Second Sight's level design. From your starting point in the hospital you eventually move on to a mental institution, a top secret Russian facility, and (the old standby) sewers. The levels are well-laid out and provide you with plenty of opportunities to use your different skills, weapons, and psionic abilities. You can go through the levels using a variety of different tactics, from sneaking past guards to killing everything that moves, to any combination of the two. I was particularly fond of telekinetically picking up guards and flinging them against the walls while they grasped at their throats begging, "Make it stop!" It was a real Darth Vader moment.